The Patterson–Gimlin Film, Reviewed as Cinema

A frame-by-frame appreciation of the 1967 Patterson–Gimlin Bigfoot film — its craft, its subject, and its 59-second runtime — from the desk that shares its name.

VANCOUVER — This desk does not, as a rule, review films. This desk reviews evidence, and finds it inconclusive, pending clearer footage. But one film sits at the intersection of both duties, and after 59 years this paper can no longer responsibly ignore it: the Patterson–Gimlin film of October 1967, sixteen millimeters, fifty-nine seconds, Bluff Creek, California.

We review it here as cinema, which is the only framework under which it can be reviewed without a subpoena.

The craft

The camerawork is handheld and urgent in the modern style, decades ahead of its time. The first act is pure kinetic chaos — sky, ground, alder — before the operator finds his subject and the film settles into its famous, steady middle passage. Critics call this passage “frame 352.” This desk calls it composition. The subject is centered, mid-stride, unhurried. She — the subject is generally styled female, on account of the anatomy, which this family newspaper will call “the anatomy” — turns to regard the camera with an expression this desk has seen on every public official it has ever asked a second question.

The performance

Skeptics describe the subject as “a man in a suit.” This desk has watched many men, in many suits, at many county meetings, and can report that none of them has ever walked like they had somewhere ancient to be. The gait is the film’s thesis: flexed knee, level head, total indifference to the audience. It is the walk of someone who does not read the comments.

The runtime

Fifty-nine seconds. No sequel, no franchise, no extended universe beyond one county’s protective legislation and every blurry photograph taken since. Restraint of this order is unknown in modern filmmaking.

The verdict

As evidence: inconclusive, pending clearer footage, the finding this desk was built on and will be buried with. As cinema: four stars. The subject declined to comment, then and since — a consistency this paper, whose editor maintains a similar policy, can only admire.

The Sightings desk’s other open investigations are catalogued in the archive. They are all open. That is what “open” means here.